ASP.NET State Management

The Web is inherently stateless; each request for a page is treated as a new request, and information from one request is not available by default to the next request. To help overcome this inherent limitation of Web-based applications, ASP.NET includes a number of features for managing state—that is, for storing information between requests. You can use state management to track any piece of information or data that affects the behavior of the application: catalogs, shopping carts, user options, lists of reviews, and hit counters are all examples.

The topics in this section provide information about ASP.NET statement management features and on choosing which type of state management you should use in different situations.